Processing information efficiently is critical to the successful operation of modern organizations. One particularly helpful tool is Microsoft Power Automate, a low-code/no-code development platform designed to help tech-savvy users create and implement workflows. This practical book explains how small-business and enterprise users can replace manual work that takes days with an automated process you can set up in a few hours using Power Automate.

Paul Papanek Stork, principal architect at Don't Pa..Panic Consulting, provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of the foundational skills required to understand and work with Power Automate. You'll learn how to use these workflows, or flows, to automate repetitive tasks or complete business processes without manual intervention.

Whether you're transferring form responses to a list, managing document approvals, sending automatic reminders for overdue tasks, or archiving emails and attachments, these skills will help you:

• Design and build flows with templates or from scratch
• Select triggers and actions to automate a process
• Add actions to a flow to retrieve and process information
• Use functions to transform information
• Control the logic of a process using conditional actions, loops, or parallel branches
• Implement error checking to avoid potential problems

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. What Is Microsoft Power Automate?

Chapter 2. Getting Started: What You Need to Know

Chapter 3. Building Your First Flow

Chapter 4. Working with Triggers and Act ions

Chapter 5. Implementing Logic

Chapter 6. Integrating with Other Power Platform Applications

Chapter 7. Troubleshooting Tips

Chapter 8. Desktop Flows

Chapter 9. Business Process Flows

This book will show you how to use Microsoft Power Automate to automate repetitive, manual, and time-consuming tasks. You’re about to take your first steps on a journey that will change the way you handle information every day. But, like all journeys, we need to start at the beginning. That means we need to understand what Power Automate is and how it fits into the broader Microsoft ecosystem. If you already know the basics, please feel free to skip ahead to the next section.

Power Automate, which was originally called Flow, is a cloud-based application that can be used to create workflows. These cloud-based workflows (flows) can use connectors to access information stored in a variety of systems. If a connector does not exist but an API does, then you can create your own custom connector. If an API doesn’t exist, then you can use a desktop flow to interact with the data.

The result is a workflow engine that works with almost any information source, whether that system is designed by Microsoft or a third party.

Who Should Read This Book

There are two primary audiences who will find this book useful. The first is a group Microsoft calls “citizen developers.” Citizen developers are defined by the following characteristics:

• They work in a position that is not part of the Information Technology (IT) organization in their company.
• They are not trained as professional developers.
• They use information in their daily work.
• They create software tools, for consumption by themselves or others, to make their work easier.

Citizen developers were clearly the audience that Microsoft focused on when designing and building Power Automate. But they aren’t the only ones who can benefit from using it. Professional developers and other technical users like IT administrators will also benefit from Power Automate. By using it, they can quickly develop prototypes or personal productivity aids that will free up additional time to concentrate on their main duties.

In essence, Power Automate puts automation tools in the hands of every employee. It can transform the way your company deals with information and makes it possible for people to create their own problem solutions within an easy-to-use, low-code/no-code platform. Reading this book will help you learn how you can use Power Automate flows to automate the use of information in your own workload.

About the Author

Paul Stork Paul is a SharePoint MVP who has specialized in Microsoft products since the mid-1990s. As a "Jack of all Trades" he has developed expertise as a network administrator, developer, and DBA. Paul is the Owner/Principal Architect at Don't Pa..Panic Consulting. His 35+ years of experience and broad background make Paul a much sought-after resource for SharePoint and Power Platform questions that cross traditional boundaries. He has worked with and taught Power Apps and Power Automate since their release in November 2016. He is currently one of the only triple Super Users on the Microsoft Power Platform forums where he answers questions and troubleshoots issues on Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agent. He's authored and contributed chapters to several books and is a frequent presenter at Microsoft 365/Power Platform conferences.